Interoperable Data Management and Instrument Control Experiences at OBSEA Joaquin del Rio 1 , Daniel Mihai Toma 1 , Thomas C. O’reilly 2 , Arne H. Bröring 3 , Antoni Manuel 1 , Kent L. Headley 2 , Duane Edgington 2 1 Technical University of Catalonia, SARTI – UPC, Spain 2 Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, MBARI, USA 3 52°North, Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH, Münster, Germany Abstract- In this article we describe our experiences with interoperable data management and instrument control standards in the Western Mediterranean Cabled Observatory, OBSEA (www.obsea.es ) (Figure 1). The SARTI research group of the Technical University of Catalonia in Vilanova i la Geltrú is in charge of OBSEA observatory development. SARTI collaborated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to explore interoperability issues within the ESONET project. One of the strong demands of ESONET is that a real-time data web interface from online observatories is needed. In order to do so, online data are urgently needed, and some proposed standards must be applied to ensure interoperability between instruments and data of multiple European observatories. I. INTRODUCTION Each ESONET observatory has its own software architecture and data management processes. Standard interfaces, protocols, and formats can be applied on top of each observatory’s data management infrastructure to access observatory data via the internet in a uniform way. These standards include the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Sensor Web Enablement (SWE), IEEE 1451.1 and initiatives such as DataTurbine for high speed real time data streaming. The use of standard web interfaces can provide interoperable data access and visualization from the user point of view. Other issues not directly related to data access or visualization must be addressed to achieve interoperability between observatories at or near the instrument level. Technologies such as MBARI PUCK protocol (for RS232 or IP instruments); the Smart Sensor Board (Ifremer, UPC) and more recently the Sensor Interface Descriptor (52North.org) are also being tested at OBSEA. Figure 1 OBSEA Structure We are also investigating standard interfaces to access observatory data archives, taking into account the experience of previous initiatives such as SeaDataNet and standards proposed by INSPIRE for metadata specification (ISO 19115) and NetCDF for data transport. Various standards are available for observatory time synchronization over IP networks. We have focused on IEEE 1588, also known as Precision Time Protocol (PTP), which is especially suited to applications that require sub-millisecond synchronization accuracy. Some currently operational observatories were deployed before IEEE 1588 v2 was released, and their junction boxes are not equipped with IEEE 1588 v2 Ethernet switches. We have run experiments to 978-1-61284-4577-0088-0/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE